


Disappear

by sighmonk



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alana has OCD, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Connor Murphy (Dear Evan Hansen) Has BPD, Dysfunctional Family, Evan Hansen Has Anxiety, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Trans Jared Kleinman, jared has adhd, ventfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 07:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sighmonk/pseuds/sighmonk
Summary: With shaking hands, Connor drew back the sleeves of his hoodie, something deep within his gut telling him that he shouldn't do it - he should quit now, while he was ahead. He'd been clean for two weeks, the longest he'd gone in quite a while, and to mess it up would be a mistake. It would show that he was the mistake.---Explicit self-harm. Please do not read if this could trigger you. There is some comfort at the end, but not anything compared to the beginning.





	Disappear

With shaking hands, Connor drew back the sleeves of his hoodie, something deep within his gut telling him that he shouldn't do it - he should quit now, while he was ahead. He'd been clean for two weeks, the longest he'd gone in quite a while, and to mess it up would be a mistake. It would show that  _he_ was the mistake.

But as the music ran through his headphones, the tears poured down his cheeks, with little gasps and sobs escaping his throat despite trying his best to hold them back. He was certain that his family could hear him; even with the amp of Zoe's guitar turned up as high as it could go, there was no doubt that his family could hear the way he was breaking down in his bathroom, could hear the way he screamed when he looked at that foreign person in the mirror.

_Not me - is it? Who is that... he looks gross._

Connor knew it was him in the mirror. He could recognize those sad blue eyes and disgustingly skinny face anywhere. But it wasn't  _him_. It wasn't his body that he was in, not his arms that he lifted up, not his scars that lined his pale form. The dissociation hit him hard, like it always did, and he found himself disgusted in the brief moment of clarity, cursing loudly as he felt his stomach churning with disgust. 

_Things were alright just a minute ago, so why am I fucking doing this? Again?_

The questions tumbled over in his mind, and he lost himself again to the endless whirlwind of self-hatred as he picked up the blade that sat near the sink. He could hardly focus on it through the tears, but the shape of the x-acto blade was unmistakable in his grasp, pinched between his thumb and front two fingers. Even though it had been weeks since he'd last used it, dried blood still marred the silver glint of the metal, making Connor clench his jaw. He was certain that was unhealthy: to reintroduce old blood with new, even if it was his own. But the thought slipped from his mind as quickly as it had come, and he tightened his grip on the blade again, moving his bracelets out of the way with his free fingers.

As clouded as his mind was, he couldn't feel it as he made the first cut, slicing through several older scars as the blade slid through the skin of his left wrist, slick and fast as it always was. He didn't feel it at all, but at the sight of quickly forming crimson droplets, his heart began to race, and decided to move up his arm to make another clean cut. Then another. And another. He began to feel that familiar sting, and something sick in his gut made him smile at the feeling. The blade passed to his left hand, and he began on his right wrist, irritation marring him as the first of his cuts was too short and shallow to feel at all. He quickly gave four move, spanning from his wrist to halfway up his forearm, almost mirroring his left wrist.

But it wasn't enough. The blade swapped hands again, and he made a final, deep cut up at the very top of his wrist, right under his bracelets, creating an equal number on each side.

For a moment, he was satisfied - he had the control to make things right, so decide if he felt or not. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a sick note that he was smiling was made, and he realized in that moment that he had stopped sobbing, only crying silently as he watched the blood from his wrists drip into the sink, creating a disgustingly pleasant pattern as it fell in little droplets. It wasn't long, however, until the disgust returned to him, and he realized with horror what he had done.

_Are you fucking crazy? You ruined it again, you fucking disgusting piece of shit._

He looked at his wrists, the darkening red slashes, and he began to take sharper, more panicked breaths, feeling his chest tighten at the realization.

_You had one job, Connor. And you couldn't even do that._

Turning towards the toilet, he went to grab for toilet paper, only to let out a string of curses when he realized that there was none. Trying to think, he hurried back into his room, grabbing a pair of dirty black boxers off the ground in desperation. Cleaning his wrists off - and now - was the only thing he could think of as he dipped the end of the boxers under a cool stream of water, wetting them just enough as to wash off the drying blood. His sobbing began again, which he realized as the next song began in his earphones, and rapidly began to clean off his wrists - there was nothing worse than the way dry blood felt against otherwise clean skin, and just the thought made his press harder against the cuts to make sure it was all off.

But the bleeding continued. He applied more water, more pressure, but the blood still dripped onto the white counter of his bathroom, smearing itself along the pristine surface as he fell to his knees on the floor sobbing. He held his arms up, against the bathroom counter, boxers pressed firmly against his left wrist, leaving the blood from his right to trickle down his arm slowly, making a pattern as it sauntered down the age-old ridges. 

_Gross, gross, gross... fucking disgusting, you piece of shit. Why did I do this? Why? Nothing happened. I hate this, I fucking hate this..._

Backing against the wall in front of his sink, Connor pulls his arms down to rest in his lap, head curled downwards as the endless stream of tears escaped him. Surely his family could hear him - he could hear Zoe now, through his earphones, messing around with something in the hallway. He almost wanted her to come in: for her to see him, all broken and defeated, to see the blood on his arms and the tears on his cheeks, and to realize that he was just a broken man. He wanted her to know, more than anything, that he didn't mean the words he said, and didn't mean to lash out at her - he hated himself for doing it. But how could he tell his little sister, how could he even begin to explain the turmoil that went on in his head, when he didn't understand it himself.

But Zoe continued on, heading back to her room as Connor cried out again in spite of himself, pressing the boxers against his right wrist and cleaning the trail of red that had begun to form. He sat there, trying to regain himself, for what seemed like hours. His breathing slowed, and he found himself more under control - until he realized that control was the pure numbness that had overtaken his body, and that, again, he had separated from himself. His mouth hung open slightly, and he hardly felt anything as he stood, his mind seemingly somewhere else as he looked around the bathroom. There was a stain of red on the counter that he couldn't find the will to deal with, and he forced himself back into his bedroom, falling gracelessly into bed, face-down into his pillow.

_Why did you do that, Connor? Why?_

"I don't know," he whispered to himself, voice small and broken as he pulled the hair from his face, the wet strands hardly feeling like anything under his fingertips. He buried himself further into the pillow, feeling detached from himself as he stared at the wall, waiting for some semblance of self to find its way back to him.

And after a while, it did. What he thought was thirty minutes turned out to be two hours, and by the time he was able to move again - in his own skin - he found that the rest of his family had gone to bed, the only person who was possibly awake being Zoe. Stirring, he forced himself into a sitting position, faded blue eyes grazing over his wrists in an all-too-common way. Something sick welled up inside of his throat, and he was afraid for a moment that the contents of his lunch would soon come back up. The feeling passed, however, as quickly as it came up, and he rolled both of his sleeves down in a single smooth motion, only to pull his phone from his pocket.

Soon, he found himself laughing, enjoying the pictures he came across or the goofy videos he found while scrolling though YouTube. While he didn't take delight in much, those things which he did were often very influential - he could go from broken to joyous in a matter of minutes. This had always been the case, and he hadn't thought anything of it until Zoe pointed out to him, one day back in his sophomore year, that his changes in mood weren't normal.

_And they're still not normal, you freak._

The thought made Connor's throat tighten, and against his better judgement, he threw his phone across the room, tossing it like it would bite him if he held onto it a moment longer. His heart raced, pounding dangerously against his chest as he forced himself to calm down - to remember that he couldn't help it. It wasn't his fault that his mind was as fucked up as it was, constantly reminding him he was nothing, constantly splitting from his body, constantly begging for the slice of metal to slice deeper than was needed to end his life. He had had these thoughts, these impulses, these nightmares most of his life. He could deal with them, even if he couldn't stop them.

_I thought the pills were supposed to make this easier?_

"The pills..." he began, looking over to where he had tossed his phone, catching sight of the twin pill bottles atop his dresser. 

That's when he remembered how long it had been since he'd last taken them. Five days, at least, since he had taken those painfully necessary pills of pink lithium and blue-grey other (he could never quite remember the name of the antidepressant he was on). Perhaps it bad been closer to a week since he'd last taken them, if not more; it's not like it really mattered. Since graduating, since summer started, his sleep schedule had been a mess, and for the first time, Connor took note of this - his lack of a schedule was making it hard to take his medication. Impossible even. He clenched his teeth as he went to pick up his phone before settling back into bed, leaning up against the headboard.

_I fucked up the pills enough that I... that I fucking... had another episode. Fucking loser. Come on, Murphy - are you seriously that fucked up? Why can't I just disappear..._

Swallowing hard, he turned his attention back to his phone, refusing to let himself start to cry again - there was no point in it anyways. It never made him feel better, only numb and broken and all the other things he didn't want to be. His family didn't care, wouldn't bat an eye when he finally comes downstairs at four in the afternoon the next day with bandages on his arms. They'd grown used to him being like this, and even Zoe, who had become nicer to him upon learning of his mental illness following his suicide attempt early in his senior year, didn't like him very much, and probably didn't care whether he lived or died. 

They stopped trying to get him to quit self-harming when he was a junior. He knew he was nothing but a lost cause to them; nothing but a waste of money who would probably die in college. He didn't blame them for thinking like that - it's what he thought of himself most of the time, when he wasn't feeling content with being a nihilistic bastard.

_But should I start the pills again?_

Mentally slapping himself, Connor couldn't help but roll his eyes at his own stupid question. Of course he needed his pills again; he was trying to  _stop_ hurting himself - if not for his sake, then for that of his friends - and going off of his pills wasn't the way to go about that. Regardless of what his family thought of him, he still had at least two friends, Evan and Jared, and an acquaintance by the name of Alana who had helped him out on more than one occasion. Sure, they really only became his friends because Evan had gotten himself mixed into a web of lies following Connor's suicide attempt, but they had grown on him, and after a string of apologies and fixed misunderstandings between the four of them (family excluded, of course), he was glad to call them friends. They were all lonely people with fucked up pasts and mental illnesses that rendered them all outcasts, so it was only natural that they would end up friends.

And as morbid as it was, Connor found himself taking comfort in that fact - that he wasn't the only one in this world who was fucked up. Evan had his anxiety, Jared had his dysphoria and ADHD, Alana had her obsessive-compulsions, and he was stuck with borderline and depression. He wasn't alone in this, even when he felt he was. The thought made him feel a bit better.

_It'll get better, even if I fuck up every now and then; even if I am a fuck up. Just breathe, Connor._

He sent a text to the group, a quick  _"thank you"_ that had become code for needing comfort. Almost instantly, his friends responded, not pressing for details but almost certainly knowing what had happened. He felt disgusted with himself as they spoke, but more than anything, he was glad to have someone to talk to - people who genuinely cared for him, even when he couldn't be forced to care for himself.

_You are not alone._

**Author's Note:**

> I had an episode tonight, so naturally, I forced it all onto Connor. If you look back in my stories, you can actually see that I do this quite often, and even though it's probably not healthy, I do this because I see a lot of similarities in our personalities and lives. Which is, uh, depressing, to say the least, but it doesn't really matter.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, even though it's depressing as hell. Let me know what y'all think with comments and what-not; feedback is an author's best friend, after all.


End file.
